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Help:Contents/New Articles
This page goes over how to create a well-written article. Creating An Article #Before creating the article you want to make, read the section first to see what you can make. Search the wiki to make sure the article doesn't already exist or the topic you want to discuss isn't documented anywhere. (failure to comply can lead to consequences) #If there's no results and the article you want to create goes by the article guidelines, click "Contribute" in the upper-right of the wiki and click "Add a Page". In the case that an article you want to make might share the same name with another article but are both different, after the title add a set of parentheses with something that makes them different between each other. (Example: Two bootleg games go by the name Mortal Kombat II but to differentiate them, the article names mention the developers as so: Mortal Kombat (Hummer) and Mortal Kombat (Yoko).) #A window will pop up asking for the title and layout to use. For the title, go by the original, full name of what the article will be discussing. (Example: The article name for Waixing uses the full name (Fuzhou Waixing Computer Science & Technology Co.,LTD) and not any shortened version of it.) For layouts, it generally doesn't matter since articles have to abide by the specific layout we have here. Several suggestions when writing/editing an article: *It is highly recommended when once you finish your edit/article, you should look it over to make sure everything looks fine and dandy. Wikia's VisualEditor does allow you to see what the article will look like once it's published. *If for some reason, you're interrupted and will be unable to finish the article, copy the article's wikitext (Look at the toolbar and there's an icon that looks like 3 horizontal lines (and nothing to the left of them). Click it and then click "Source Editor". The classic editor will have a tab at the top labeled "Source" that lets you switch to it), paste it in a text editor like Notepad and once you have the time to get back to work on it, create the article with the same name and paste the article in the source editor. (Copying it with Wikia's VisualEditor will not keep the formatting of the article, If you prefer the VisualEditor, just switch it back to Visual after pasting.) Do NOT publish an unfinished-looking article. (Mentioning that the article is still WIP does not exempt it.) *It's highly recommended you create the article if you have a decent amount of knowledge on what you're writing about. It's more preferable to have an article with some information instead of an article that only has a small description on what it's about. Some topics (such as bootleg ROM hacks) may not have a whole lot to write about but try to write as much as you can about it. Article Layouts Once you've created an article, there's a specific layout to follow so that the article looks nice and presentable. ''NOTE: The templates described here are for those using the source editor. If you plan on using only the VisualEditor, click on "Insert" and go to "Template". From there, you need to look up the template. (Classic editor needs you to click on "Add other templates" on the right)'' Infoboxes (Games and companies only) An infobox basically contains basic info about the game and/or company as well as a picture related to it. These always come first in an article (unless there's a template). To learn about the infoboxes we use, go to these links and follow what they do: *Template:Infobox_game *Template:Infobox_company In the VisualEditor, you can select the template and fill in the info. If you're using wikitext, copy the syntax, put it in the article and then fill in after the equal sign of each row title. If you're unsure what to put in a specific row, leave it blank just so someone else can fill it in. Unfilled rows will not show up in the infobox. Description A short description that's only several sentences long about what the article is talking about. No need to go into detail about these. If there is no infobox, this is the first thing you see on an article. Body This part is basically a free-for-all and will vary depending on what the article is about. Common sections in the body of the article include: *Overview (Goes into detail about a game, engine, tool, etc. Generally not used for company articles.) *History/Formation (History of a game/company, how the company was formed) *Games list/Cart ID (List of games the developer has made or all of the games that a publisher has well, published) *Hack list (List of hacks that exist for the game, can include summaries for each hack) *Aliases (Alternate aliases companies may have gone under) Trivia Generally reserved for minor facts that don't need to appear in the body of the article. These always use bulleted lists to seperate each fact. Generalization articles generally don't necessairly use these. If the trivia section is fairly long and a lot of the facts are related, you may want to consider splitting them into their own sections. Subpages (Optional) Basically these are pages related to the article's source and usually contain info that don't deserve to be mentioned in the body of the article but they don't belong in the trivia section either. Some examples of when these can be used is to detail unused content, hacks that a company has made, translations of in-game items, game data, etc. If you're not sure if what you want to discuss deserves a subpage, ask an admin. To make a subpage, make a new article with the title of the source (make sure it's the same exact name) but put a slash at the end and then put the name of what the subpage will discuss: http://bootleggames.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Contents/New_Articles In this case, the article name is "Help:Contents/New_Articles". To make a link to the subpage, use this subpage template and follow the documentation. References (Optional, but encouraged!) If any references were used in the article, this section needs to be created. This section only needs to contain: and nothing else; it will be filled in automatically with any references used. You are strongly encouraged to reference the source of any new information you add, particularly related to undumped/unconfirmed games, company history and any other subjects where the source isn't immediately obvious. We don't have any restrictions on what you can use as a source - for example company websites, YouTube videos and forum posts are all allowed, unlike on Wikipedia - as long as the source backs up the information you are adding, and isn't demonstrably false. For more information on how to use references, see . External Links (Optional) Used for non-wiki links to link the reader to outside sources related to the article. Gallery Galleries are used to show off additional images that don't need to be in the main part of the article. These can contain any known cartridges for a game, boxes and manuals for games, additional screenshots, multiple company logo revisions, etc. To create one, make a section called "Gallery" and use these tags: To add in image that has been uploaded, in between the tags add: imageexample.jpg|description With "imageexample.jpg" replacing the image name and "description" replacing a small description you write in for that image. Gallery Subpage If the gallery exceeds six images, it would be best to make a subpage for the gallery rather than keeping it on the page. #Create the gallery section in the main article and set up the gallery tags. #For games, the gallery section in the original article can include pictures of the original cart. (If you're unsure about which is the original cart, ignore this step completely). #In the source editor, include this message right under the gallery end tag, where "Article Name" is the article you're working on: See also: Article Name/gallery #Make the new article using the original article's title but add "/gallery" at the end of the new article's title. (Example: Somari's gallery page would be named Somari/gallery) #Make sections in the gallery article for certain kinds of pics. For example, for games you could make sections for the original box, a manual (if you have scans for one), it's cart variants and additional screenshots #Start putting the images in each section. Languages (Russian) Some articles on the wiki may contain something like this at the end of the wikitext: ru:game This refers to the fact there's a Russian article for the wiki as well. (Link to Russian BootlegGames Wiki) If you're making an article, there's no need to add the above tag the article unless you decide to make a Russian translation as well. If you're editing and you spot it, leave it alone. Categories When you make an article, you can put your article into certain categories in order While editing, to the right of the editor there will be an area where you can put your article in an existing category or start up a new category for it. This will help users who want to look up a specific but broad topic. Generally, every article should be put in appropriate categories; you can look at existing similar articles to get an idea of the sort of categories we use. For example: * A game should usually go in the main Games category, then a category for its console (e.g. Famicom/NES games) and one for its genre (e.g. Fighting games). There are also individual categories for certain more prolific developers, such as Hummer Team, so if one exists for the game's developer (or you think one needs to exist) you can put it in one of those too. * If a company is a publisher, it should go in Category:Publishers, if it is a developer it should go in Category:Developers, and if it is a hardware manufacturer it should go in Category:Hardware manufacturers. If you know its location, you can also put it in an appropriate location category, such as Companies from Taipei, Taiwan. * Hardware should go in the main Hardware category and, if it's a clone of an existing system, a category for the type of clone, such as Famiclones. There are several other categories in use, such as Multicarts, Hacks and Development tools. If you want to add something that doesn't fit into any existing category, and you're sure it's appropriate for the wiki, feel free to add a new one. If you wish to add a category to a page that has already been created, instead of opening the editor you can go to the bottom of the article and click "Add Category". Copying from other wikis You are allowed to copy relevant information from other wikis so long as their license is compatible with our own (which is CC-BY-SA 3.0) - this includes Wikipedia. However you need to make sure it complies with our own rules and guidelines, and you should especially be aware of the following: * You should copy the wikitext source of the page, viewable by clicking "Edit" on the other wiki's page; do not directly copy the text or HTML into the editor. * The other wiki may make use of templates which we do not have. In this case you will either have to remove them (if they are not necessary), copy the template source directly into the page, adapt the information to another format (for example, our infoboxes) or recreate the template here. However do not create new templates just to copy a single wiki article if they'll never be used elsewhere; new templates should be useful to us and reusable across multiple pages. * If there are any images in the other wiki's article, you will need to reupload them here. (Make sure the licensing allows you to do that, or your usage falls under fair use) * If the content you copy contains internal wiki links to articles which would never exist on this wiki (for example, an article about a tennis game linking to a "Tennis" article about the sport itself, which we would never create), you should remove the links. To satisfy Creative Commons licensing requirements you need to credit the original source of the information. For a Wikipedia article you should do this by adding the following template at the bottom of the page: where "Article title" is the title of the article on Wikipedia. (You should leave this in place even if the Wikipedia article has been deleted, which it probably has been) Different kinds of pages Redirect Pages Redirect pages basically redirect you to another article already on a wiki because they're not worth having an article dedicated to them and the original article may contain information about them. To make one, once you create the page, select Source for the editor and add only this line in while replacing "Original Article" with the article you wish: #redirect Original Article Do not make nested redirect pages (A redirect page leading to another redirect page), doing so would only lead to a page showing where it will redirect to and will not redirect to the original article itself. Disambiguation Pages Disambiguation pages are made when there's pages that have ambiguous titles. Unlike redirect pages, these don't require any special formatting. The only requirements is a sentence saying that what's in the article name could refer to specific articles and then a bulleted list of those articles. A good example of this is the Mortal Kombat II disambiguation page. Category Pages These are usually created when a new category is made and don't need to be made from scratch. Generally, if you edit one, all you'll see is a description for it. For the most part, these can just be left untouched. Examples of good articles *''Somari'' (Game article) *Vast Fame (Company article) *PocketNES (Emulator/Tool article; one of the several pages that doesn't need an infobox)